Spending too much time at the computer? Feeling aches and pains after staring at the screen? Noticing tension in your neck, back or other areas? .....
Improve health, wellbeing and productivity with Jim Crosthwaite, privately or in your workplace. Clients learn : self-observation and body mapping skills; how to change bad habits; how to better coordinate actions like typing and reaching; and many tips based on Alexander Technique.

Alexander Technique

Monday, May 27, 2013

Fix me please … will I get pain relief?

Alexander
Technique may help your pain disappear in just one or two lessons.No guarantees, but it can happen. However,
depending on your needs, there is much more to be gained.

Pain relief
experienced by recent clients

Diane in Adelaide felt great relief having had excruciating back pain for two days after a long reading session, followed by some heavy gardening.

Greg in Fitzroy found that his lower back pain ceased after a workshop in which I gave advice on adjusting the chair seat so it tilted forward rather than back.

Ruth in Carlton came to me with excruciating shoulder pain. It went after one lesson, though she came for many more lessons to address underlying tension.

A worker in
Southbank told me that she could stir food on the stove without pain – after
following my advice to her and her work colleagues at their monthly work
meeting.

What do we teach?

Interestingly,
teachers of Alexander Technique do not try to ‘fix’ the pain. We aim to teach
you :

- how to sit,
stand and move in new ways,

- an awareness of
the habits that pull you down,

- an ability to
consciously make choices that avoid these habits, and

- to work towards
a mind-body unity that makes all this possible

Education or
health therapy?

So is Alexander
Technique a form of education or is it a health therapy? FM Alexander, the
founder, always insisted that it was a form of education – addressing
psycho-physical coordination. Interestingly, Alexander used this term or others
such as use of the self. The term ‘Alexander Technique’ was popularised after
his death. Since then it has also become known as a health therapy, written
about in books and websites dealing with holistic health, and recognised by
health insurance funds.

On a recent visit
to Australia, American teacher John Nicholls suggests the distinction between
education and health is not very helpful (Nicholls 2012). I like the
description of Alexander Technique on his website (http://atnyc.us/). Here are
some extracts (in inverted commas):

“The Alexander
Technique re-organizes patterns of chronic tension that have unconsciously
become a fixed part of how we move, breathe, and act in the world”. It doesn’t
rely on relaxation or exercising to release this tension. It focuses instead on
“consciously addressing the primary coordination of postural support, movement
and breathing”. By this means, “tension could be transformed into available,
coherent energy”.

“All activity
then becomes far more energetically efficient. Physiologically, the specialized
guidance of an Alexander teacher’s hands and verbal instruction can
re-distribute tone between the support muscles of the neck and back, the
breathing muscles of the trunk, and the movement muscles of the limbs. Psychologically,
this brings about a whole new awareness of what it means to be supported, to be
breathed, and how to allow appropriate effort to arise from this
self-sustaining background without interfering with it.” (my italics)

New skills

This involves
learning new skills, which may take several, or many, lessons. Increasingly the
skills can be applied in daily life. Nicholls also argues that “this heightened
awareness of physical coordination can bring with it that greater ability to be
in the moment, consciously present, grounded and uplifted, which is sought
after in so many psychological and spiritual disciplines.”

References

John Nicholls
(2012) Keynote address. Annual Conference of the Australian Society of
Alexander Teachers, April 13- 15, Canberra.